HQ Player

[jhwalker]

1 minute ago, Dr Tone said:

 

You said you were using AMSDM7 512+FS, I find that modulator a little muffled doing DSD256 but does throw a very wide sound stage.  IMO, the adaptive modulator are all a little warmer in comparison to non adaptive.

 

A more apples to apples comparison might just be the straight HQPlayer DSD7 modulator to Roon's equivalent.

 

 

 

Thank you for the feedback!  I'll give it a try

[jhwalker]

6 minutes ago, ted_b said:

Dr Tone, my first question is : why do you shut down your dac? 

 

FWIW, I leave all my equipment (i.e., mRendu, NAA, DAC) on 24x7.  HQPlayer does not recover gracefully from turning off any of the "chain" while it's running.

 

At a minimum, if you're going to shut down any of the devices, shut down HQPlayer *first* - after that, you can shut down the NAA, mRendu, DAC, whatever.  Same when starting up; i.e., reverse the order - start HQPlayer *last*.  In my experience, that just works best.

[jhwalker]

20 minutes ago, Dr Tone said:

 

I don't want to have to log into my computer every time I want to play music.  That's silly.  I want to power up my audio gear, pick up my iPad and press play in Roon.

 

. . . and that's why you shouldn't shut things down   

[jhwalker]

52 minutes ago, steveoat said:

No it is not.  I have tried 3.16.3 on three different machine with different DACs and HQ Player crashes while opening on each one of them.  Is there anything else I can try?

 

It works fine for me, at least.  I know that doesn't help you just wanted to confirm it's not a universal issue.

[jhwalker]

1 hour ago, Dr Tone said:

 

I'm now disvovering more and more modern recordings that need >9db of head room with closed-form.

 

There has to be a point when data starts getting lossed with a too large amount of head room?  I really love how closed-form sounds but I'm not comfortable with 15db of headroom all the time as hqplayer is headless driven by Roon in my case.

 

Of course I could let those albums limit but that will always be in the back of my head when listening.

 

It's odd - I've literally NEVER seen any limiting reported in my use of HQPlayer, regardless of what filters, etc., I use, and regardless of what source material.

I just tried again, setting max volume to 0db (i.e., turned off limiting protection completely) and using a modern electronic / dance recording that demonstrates absolutely maxed volume - still no limiting.

 

What type of material are you seeing that is causing you to have to select such a drastic head room setting?

[jhwalker]

5 hours ago, Dr Tone said:

 

It's only with the closed-form filter every other filter is fine with normal amounts of headroom.

 

Xavier Rudd's latest studio album is the worst.  Dave Matthews albums will do it as well but not as bad.

 

Hm - doesn't do it for me even with the Xavier Rudd (I'm assuming you're talking about "Nanna").  Weird.

[jhwalker]

3 hours ago, Miska said:

 

RME ADI-2 DAC/Pro can do DSD256 on Mac over DoP.

 

Also iFi micro iDSD can do it too. And iDAC2 if you flash it with special firmware version.

 

 

Any of the CURRENT iFi products support DSD256 over DoP (e.g., iFi Nano, iFi xDSD, etc.).

 

And they support "native" DSD (i.e., direct, not using DoP) via Linux / variants - so most of the streamers (e.g., microRendu-style) will support "native" DSD512.

[jhwalker]

1 hour ago, RamUwe said:

 

Thanks for your reply, Miska.

 

It would be great if my rig could play DSD128/DSD256 with poly-sync-xtr-mp. Would that be possible?

 

I have exactly the same MBP.  It can do DSD128 with just about any filter, DSD256 with most filters using the -2s variants, and DSD512 with none that I've found.

 

I know they use different methods, etc., but Roon can run DSD512 resampling all day long even on my Mac Mini (a much lower spec'ed machine). I would love to get HQPlayer running at DSD512 on either platform, though, given I think it sounds better than Roon

 

Note that you can only go up to DSD256 anyway if you're using USB connection direct to your MacBook Pro.  I stream to a microRendu, where the limit is DSD512.

[jhwalker]

3 hours ago, Miska said:

 

OK, that is strange, because I use my fanless i5 7600T machine for DSD512 upsampling to Holo Audio Spring DAC, with -2s filters. And it is not even close to the limits. Not a Mac, but I would expect the T-series CPU to be similar enough to laptop models used on MacBook Pro's.

 

My old quad-core i5 iMac can do DSD256 with -2s filters. While old dual-core i5 Mac Mini can only do DSD128. That's all Mac's I have.

 

But that is why I'm saying that one can only know by testing...

 

 

Mine doesn't seem to be hitting any CPU limits on the i7 MBP (running pretty consistently at about 75%, no spikes), but stuttering like crazy after a few seconds:

[jhwalker]

2 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Network problem with the microRendu perhaps?

 

 

Same microRendu receiving from Roon at DSD512 (i.e., same traffic) all day long.  'tis a puzzlement.

 

Wouldn't worry about it, but I still think HQPlayer running poly-sinc-xtr sounds better

[jhwalker]

38 minutes ago, semente said:

I am getting a strange message when I try to open the v3.25 DMG:

 

 

I downloaded and installed it with no problems just now.  I'd try deleting your .dmg / download file and try the download again - probably a corrupt file.

[jhwalker]

20 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

Main new features are listed on the announcement. It aligns some of the functionality/settings of Embedded and Desktop. Now all three products are again aligned, Desktop, Embedded and Pro. All are in 4.x series.

 

Upgrade is Desktop -> Desktop, Embedded is a separate thing that will keep going as it has been on it's own track. You can find relevant pricing info from the web shop (with/without the coupon code).

 

 

Very nice to see this update It appears that integration with Roon no longer functions?  If not, is it planned for a future iteration?

 

To be complete - it appears integration with HQPlayer 3.x on the same machine works just fine, so I'm assuming this is a limitation or temporary glitch with the 4.x "server"?

[jhwalker]

Just now, Miska said:

 

It is working just like before, no changes on that front. I just finished three hours of Tidal playback from Roon...

 

 

4.x server is like 3.x stripped down from the local library management things with slimmer GUI and with support for audio inputs added. So if you use Roon, you don't need the HQPlayer Client of 4.x at all. The idea is that many people use some external remote control application, so the unnecessary bits and pieces not needed for that use case have been moved out to external client application. But the local drag-and-drop and other content browse/input playback cases are still self-contained in the server.

 

Did you remember to enable remote control access from the main window? These don't come over from previous versions. And you cannot have both 3.x and 4.x running simultaneously for remote control because they overlap...

 

 

HQPlayer Desktop 4.x is running on the same box as Roon server (address defined as "localhost") and Roon reports it cannot connect to HQPlayer 4.x.  Just for grins, I enabled network connections and added a new HQPlayer in Roon ("HQPlayer 4.x"), specifying the actual IP address of the server, with no success there, either:

 

 

 

 

[jhwalker]

15 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

Strange... Mac firewall active?

 

 

 

If the two are running on the same box "localhost" as address should be fine. Note that do not use normal IP of the machine if the two are in the same computer, instead preferably use "localhost" or less preferably alternatively "127.0.0.1" to use faster local loopback network interface instead of going through full protocol stack.

 

 

Yep, strange

 

3.x works fine on either my Mac Mini (localhost) or MacBook Pro (over the network), but Roon cannot connect to 4.x on either machine.  I guess I'll keep an eye on this before attempting to buy.

 

By the way - your blurb didn't say how much the discount was for 3.x license owners.  I see the license price has gone up quite a bit since 3.x - would like to think the coupon would bring it back down, at least.

[jhwalker]

8 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

For this case, I have a temporary solution to try, so on macOS if you have problems to connect from Roon to HQPlayer, you can try opening terminal and starting HQPlayer with following command:

HQPLAYER_IPV6=0 /Applications/HQPlayer4Desktop.app/Contents/MacOS/HQPlayer4Desktop

This disables IPv6 support and could help the case. Success/failure reports welcome!

 

 

Yep, that's it.

 

I was also seeing initial failure in "seeing" the NAA (i.e., unable to open output device, or whatever), which is now working properly, as well.

 

So the questions would be:  1) Can the IPv6 issue be "fixed" in HQPlayer?  if not 2) Can this setting be saved so that it can be launched normally rather than via the terminal?

[jhwalker]

5 minutes ago, AudioDoctor said:

 

Spotify says their Premium tier gives 320kbps mp3 files, not lossless. I guess for the majority of casual listeners, that's likely fine. We're all here though because we are in the niche that Qobuz is serving. We want the higher res, the lossless and up files.

That's right - they keep hinting they'll offer a lossless option, but haven't yet.  I wish they would work with Roon, too :(